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Jesse Willis, administrator of the estate of Amanda Willis, asked the Marion County court for permission to sell land (rather than slaves) from Marion's estate to repay his debts. He claimed that selling the slaves could not be done without upsetting Amanda's children. Willis added, the slaves are all of one family, and [they are] mostly children which are constantly increasing in value. He did not...

It was a grave tragedy. An enslaved African American woman of Polk County, Tennessee put an end to the lives of her children and then took her own life one September night in 1852. Authorities confirmed that the woman killed all four of her children by slitting their throats while they slept. After the gruesome deed had been carried out, she too ended her life in the same manner. When questioned about...

It is hard to believe one little girl could cause such a sensation, but when people caught site of Mary Mildred, a young former slave who had been employed in Alexandria, they were astonished and labeled her the white slave from Virginia. According to a New York Times article, the girl, whose father bought her freedom after escaping to Boston, was a real, 'Ida May,'- a young female slave, so white...

A promissory note is a contract detailing the terms of a promise or loan by one person to pay a sum of money to another person. Many people in the antebellum south used promissory notes when dealing with large amounts of money. John Day and Horatio S. Dexter entered into a promissory note together on October 5, 1824. The amount of the note was for six thousand four hundred and seventy nine dollars....

In 1841, R. Ballard, a slave trader who owned property in Mississippi, brought a Federal suit against Henry Turner, claiming the Turner owed him 6,300 dollars. The bill was the remainder owed for forty-two slaves that Ballard had sold to Turner in 1835. Unfortunately for Ballard, Turner was quite unhappy with his purchase. He returned seven of the slaves to Ballard, declaring that they were either...

In the back of the Staunton Spectator, May 12, 1863, there appeared a section for Advertisements and Lost Property. Directly under and advertisement of ten pigs for sale, there is the section of lost property, for which rewards are offered. There are six articles that report lost animals or slaves. 50 is offered for a stolen black horse, as well as 50 for a dark bay mare. Intermixed with these ads...

On the 26th of July 1840 the slave, Joe was thrown in the Rappahannock County jail, based on the charge that he was a runaway. Joe contested this charge, saying that his owner, Miss Jane Rust, of Page County died in March, and he assumed that he was a free man. Despite notices of Joe's capture, Sheriff French Strother was unable to prove the certainty behind his claim, because no one from Miss. Rust's...

In 1868, a young African American girl was kidnapped from her home in St. Louis,
Missouri and sold into slavery in Cuba. During her two years of enslavement, she was forced to
work in a hotel in Havana under terrible work and living conditions. She was finally able to
escape the captivity of her house and enlisted the help of some Americans to make it to the
United States' Embassy in Havana. At...

John Dewery, a bright mulatto...nineteen or twenty years old, found himself in a precarious situation. As he was sitting in the Clark County Jail in Alabama on January 7, 1836, the Mobile Commercial Register published an announcement about his capture and arrest as an escaped slave. This was problematic because he swore in vain that he was a freed person. Nevertheless, the paper reported that if his...

John W. Bridges of Wilcox County, Alabama, desperately penned a letter to the Southern Recorder, the Columbian Telescope, the Carolina Observer, and the Georgia Advertiser on May 27, 1820, looking for a runaway slave by the name of Aaron. A few weeks prior to the publication of this letter, Aaron, a stout well-fed Negro man of 30 years standing around 5'10 had escaped from the John Bridges' plantation...